Water agency expects legal challenge next year

December 10, 2013|By Geoff Ziezulewicz, Chicago Tribune reporter

Bolingbrook is leading four other southwest suburban towns in an effort to take over a privately owned Lake Michigan water pipeline to lower resident bills, but the group has yet to explain how their plan will lower water rates. Agency attorneys said Monday they expect a legal challenge to their lawsuit next year. (Geoff Ziezulewicz, Chicago Tribune)

The Northern Will County Water Agency is gearing up for an expected legal challenge early next year to its effort to seize control of a privately owned water pipeline.

The agency members — Bolingbrook, Homer Glen, Romeoville, Lemont and Woodridge — filed an eminent domain lawsuit in January against American Lake Water Company to take over the Bedford Park transmission line, which runs Lake Michigan water out to that portion of the county.

Agency attorney James Boan said at the agency's quarterly meeting Monday that American Lake Water likely will file a motion to dismiss the case early next year on the grounds that the move does not fulfill a legitimate public purpose.

If that motion to dismiss is denied by the judge, the trial will likely begin at the end of 2014 or early 2015, agency attorney Daniel Formeller said Monday.

"It's going to be a slow process," Bolingbrook Mayor Roger Claar said Monday. "But that's what you have when you have an unwilling seller."

The agency initially tried to purchase the pipeline for $37.5 million in 2012 before initiating the eminent domain action earlier this year.

Agency members claim taking the pipeline and putting it in public hands will help lower residents' water bills, but company officials say the pipeline has little effect on the average water bill.

Claar and the other mayors have refused interview requests regarding exactly how their plan will lower water costs for residents.

While the details remain out of the public eye, the agency's bills continue to pile up.

The agency members on Monday approved payment of more than $80,000 in legal and engineering bills from recent months for the pipeline takeover effort.

Bolingbrook has the most private water customers that would be affected by the legal action and pays about 80 percent of the agency's bills.

Boan also told agency members Monday of Bolingbrook's intent to explore taking over the water system in town, a move that would not require the agency's involvement.

"It's a separate action by Bolingbrook," he said.

Bolingbrook is in the process of requesting financial and infrastructural information from Illinois American Water, the company that runs the water system in Bolingbrook.

The length of the exploratory process will depend on how quickly Illinois American provides the information, Boan said, but will generally be the same kind of process that the agency has been following.

"And the same types of resistance," Claar said, alluding to water company mailings to residents contending that Claar and the other mayors have provided no plan regarding how they will ultimately lower residents' water rates.

Agency members will have spent roughly $1 million on the water pipeline takeover by this spring. Bolingbrook and Homer Glen have spent thousands over the years studying the possibility of taking over their respective water systems.

All told, agency members are prepared to spend up to $50 million on the pipeline effort.